Monday, November 07, 2005

Digital Music News

"AOL will use its recently-acquired MusicNow property to deliver a web-based solution, while Napster and RealNetworks will broaden their existing application-based approaches. Meanwhile, Apple has little intention of moving away from the application, indicating that competitors are taking fewer cues from the market leader.


The key advantage of a web-based solution is accessibility - not only from multiple computers and browsers, but increasingly from mobile devices. At first blush, the proposition is compelling: buy or listen to music from wherever you are, by simply entering a username and password. And for a player like AOL, a web-based approach is designed to integrate more smoothly into a larger music destination."

Sunday, November 06, 2005

E-Commerce News: Entertainment : AOL Aims High With MusicNow Buy

E-Commerce News: Entertainment : AOL Aims High With MusicNow Buy: "MusicNow has a long history in Internet time, having been founded in 1999 as FullAudio. Circuit City owned it for about a year, in a move that many analysts viewed as a bold experiment at the time but has proven to be a poor fit.
But that time has given MusicNow ample opportunity to develop a strong user interface and the type of features menu that analysts say will be increasingly important to set music download sites apart, especially as the predicted shift from pay-per-download -- the current model offered by the dominant Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) iTunes -- to subscription services."

Saturday, November 05, 2005

AOL Adds Further Tune To The Sounds Through Its Music Subscription Service

AOL Adds Further Tune To The Sounds Through Its Music Subscription Service: "On Thursday, America Online Inc., announced the spectacular news that it has acquired online music subscription company MusicNow LLC, and has launched a preview of the AOL-branded service."

AOL Adds Further Tune To The Sounds Through Its Music Subscription Service

AOL Adds Further Tune To The Sounds Through Its Music Subscription Service: "On Thursday, America Online Inc., announced the spectacular news that it has acquired online music subscription company MusicNow LLC, and has launched a preview of the AOL-branded service."

The Modern Journalist: It's Back To The Web For Digital Music

The Modern Journalist: It's Back To The Web For Digital Music: "Breaking with the Apple iTunes / Napster model, many biggest digital music providers are moving portions or all of their services onto the Web. This trend toward the Web by music services may be a part of a broader move by technology companies--most notably in Microsoft's new Window Live campaign--to offer increasingly powerful computing features on the Web that were once limited to computer desktops and hard drives."

Jon Wright UK - Music To Our Ears

Jon Wright UK - Music To Our Ears: "Nice to see other music providers starting to think a little differently about how they deliver music online. According to CNET news, America online are going to do things a little differently by providing music that consumers can access anywhere."

Friday, November 04, 2005

GarageRockers

GarageRockers: "As long as WMA DRM is Windows only, they leave out the statistically better educated, wealthier users. Of course, the fact remains that even if Microsoft were to make WMA DRM Mac compatible (and in their current state of desperation, it's pretty much just a matter of time), the better educated user is still most likely to make the smarter choice, and buy an iPod and buy from iTMS because their DRM restrictions are more open than those of WMA DRM."


Ah, now here's a logical arguement... I would contest the point, but I'm obviously not appopriately educated to the point where I could engage in a battle of wits with him (since my OS has a "Microsoft" emblazoned on it). What I love most about his "logic" is that the reason iTunes/iPod will win is due to it's unsurmountable market share position (80% marketshare). Bascially, if you're not the market leader then you shouldn't even try, yet he seems to be composing this arguement from his Mac.....

Dygital's Blog - AOL Announces Acquisition of MusicNow

Dygital�s Blog � AOL Announces Acquisition of MusicNow: "This is good, and competitive to iTunes. Though, realistically, iTunes has more marketshare and more opt-in users with iPods; this does offer people with that Microsoft �PlaysForSure� crap an option to use this service. This is a pretty cool service, for the same price as iTunes and integrates with your AOL/AIM login. I wish they had a PayPal option, but heh, I guess its okay as it is. This service is better than MusicNet that AOL has been offering for a while now. Glad to see some more progress."

Variety.com - AOL retunes to MusicNow

Variety.com - AOL retunes to MusicNow: "While similar in content and pricing to musicstores run by Napster, Rhapsody and Yahoo!, AOL's will be the only one that's fully Web-based and doesn't require that users download an application. That could give it an edge in drawing in casual users surfing around the AOL.com site."

AOL Ramps Up Tunes, Buying MusicNow - Yahoo! News

AOL Ramps Up Tunes, Buying MusicNow - Yahoo! News: "MusicNow holds its own against the competing services currently, but AOL must build on what's there in order to make it compelling and unique, Schadler says.
'It allows me to pick songs and express preferences and see playlists of people like me. It's pretty good,' he says. 'If it's about other people finding me based on my profile and contacting me over this Web site saying, 'Dude, you've got to check this out,' that's not happening.'"


Hey, I'll take it. It's not a rave review, but I'm not even sure if they checked out the new features that launched this week. But, I'll keep my eyes open and post more reviews here when I find them.

Web-based tunes--music to bloggers' ears | News.blog | CNET News.com

Web-based tunes--music to bloggers' ears | News.blog | CNET News.com: "Many are welcoming MusicNow and the overall movement, which runs counter to Apple's iTunes model of delivering downloads through a separate software application."

Digital music's move back to the Web | CNET News.com

Digital music's move back to the Web | CNET News.com: "The biggest to take this step so far is America Online, which announced Thursday that it had purchased the Circuit City-owned MusicNow and would adopt its Web-based music service as AOL's main store. "

Awwwww.....yeah!

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